For all of the trauma in the world there is a shortage of qualified mental health professionals to provide much needed emotional and psychological support

A lot of people want to help survivors of trauma but don't know where to start

First Aid Arts exists to train and support people just like you to provide emotional and psychological first aid for friends, family, community members, and yourself.

We live in a world overwhelmed with trauma. Right now there are 65 million displaced people, 29.8 million estimated slaves—entire cultures disrupted by abuse and disaster.

Beyond the body

We know that when disaster happens, we send first aid to address physical wounds. This stabilizes someone until they can start taking care of themself or until they can get to a medical professional that can help them further.

But the effects of disaster are not just physical; trauma affects your body, mind, spirit and relationships. First Aid Arts trains people how to use tools to address basic mental and emotional and relational health.

Trauma brain

When your brain experiences trauma or stress it goes into survival mode operating out of your amygdala. Think fight, flight, or freeze. This is a natural way for your brain and body to protect or defend itself.

When you do art and create you are actually making neuro-pathways in your brain that help you regain access to your critical thinking center, and with that normal self-awareness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal skills.

Creativity for healing

When something traumatic happens and your brain goes into survival mode, your memories of that event might be unspeakable both because it was horrifying and because your brain was not storing whole memories. They become fragmented, stored in nonverbal memory in your brain and body.

Neuroscience has proven that one of the most powerful antidotes to trauma is creativity—especially in healthy community. Whether it is making music, drawing, journaling, dancing, cooking — you choose — just participating in the act of creativity is allowing you to express those fragments in ways that words cannot.

We train people how to utilize first aid for the heart

We have witnessed an immense landscape of tragedy and trauma in the world. We have also witnessed incredible healing through the arts.